Bungie's 'Destiny' Might Be Smaller Than Everyone Thinks

In my "review" of sorts of the Destiny PlayStation and Xbox beta posted this weekend, I had a lot of good things to say. The game is a blast from what I've played so far, and both the alpha and the beta have shown me enough to get me very excited for September.

But one point that was raised during the beta was the possible length and scope of the game being less than many, including myself, were anticipating. We've been told that the beta would contain about 10% of the content of the game, which seemed a bit odd considering I beat every story mission featured in about an hour total.

Now, however, it seems we may have experienced even more of the game's final content than we believed. The news comes from Bungie community manager Deej, who said a few things of note in a recent livechat. First, "We've revealed everything you're going to explore in the first version of the game." That's being interpreted to mean that Earth, the moon, Venus and
Mars are the only planets/moons in the game, with perhaps a bonus surprise like Jupiter or Europa to come.

But past that, Deej said that there would only be one explorable area per planet. In other words, Old Russia is the only part of Earth we'll be traveling to during the final release of the game.

The news has seemed to disappoint many who thought Destiny was going to be dramatically larger than that. Though were never promised an exact number of planets or locations, given how ambitious Destiny is supposed to be, four or five planets (or moons) with one explorable area each is a lot less than most expected. Destiny pitched itself as a galaxy-exploring MMO. Both "galaxy exploring" and "MMO" conjure up images of a far larger play area, but I'm pretty sure we all know what's going on here.

We all have to keep in mind that Destiny is being designed for the long haul. For a $60 box copy with no monthly fee and apparently no prominent cash store, the game is A) not going to have a sprawling, gigantic MMO world right off the bat and B) going to have to find a way to make money consistently in other ways.

I'm guessing that way is DLC, which is supported by Deej's quip about this being the "first version" of the game.

Will you pay $15 three months from launch for access to another planet and a new cluster of strikes and story missions? Bungie and Activision are betting you will, and this will be how the game's universe expands, through DLC. We may very well get up to six, seven or eight explorable planets, but we'll have to pay to get there. The same goes for the level cap, which seems stuck at a relatively low 20 (you're level 8 by the time the beta is over), and I have to imagine level cap increases will be a big part of future content expansions as well.

This comes down to a matter of expectations. I really didn't think it was going to be possible for Bungie to deliver a game on the scope they promised with a simple $60 box copy. Honestly, even if the number of released planets at launch is four, those open world areas are pretty gigantic, and Destiny will still contain more content than a majority of other games priced similarly. Compare it to would-be rival Titanfall, for example, and imagine the outrage if Bungie was simply selling the Crucible alone for $60. There'd be riots in the streets. And in my eyes, if I have to make a choice, I would rather pay for DLC as a way to support a game than I would forking over a continuous monthly fee to access it, or have my experience mucked up by being constantly pushed into a cash store. Ideally every game would be Skyrim, with 200 hours of exploration gameplay packed in at launch, but I just don't think that's realistic to expect for most titles. But even if Destiny only has ten hours of story, there are likely still dozens or even hundreds of hours to be found between strikes/raids, the Crucible and general exploration. That seems pretty substantive to me, and a good starting point at the very least.

That said, I do understand the perception that Bungie may have oversold their own project a bit here. They promised the moon, and they literally delivered just that, but their grandiose talk of their game implied that it would be far more expansive that four or five areas to explore, even if they are rather large. It's understandable why some fans may feel misled now that the full scope of the game is coming to light. It's certainly big, but is it "massive" enough to warrant that first "M" in "MMO"?

I have no doubt that someday Destiny will be that game they promised, but it's going to take many DLC packs, larger expansions and full-on sequels to get there. For now, it's probably best to manage your expectations heading into the release of this "first version," and know that this is probably going to be a marathon requiring a substantial investment over time.

Update: A response from Bungie, which doesn't give a fixed planet or area count to counter everything said above, but still promises the game will be big enough to make everyone happy. The "it's like an ongoing TV show" idea reinforces my thoughts about future DLC. But hopefully it will be a mix of paid and free to keep players engaged.

"Oh, hello.

Destiny's pretty big. It's the biggest game we've ever made, by far, and we're sort of known for making games you can play for months, years, and even decades if you're a little bit...dedicated.

With Destiny, we're looking to exceed what we've done before, not just in terms of scale - the Moon is our smallest destination - but in terms of scope and breadth of activities. That's true for day one, as you expect, but it also means we want Destiny to have super long legs.

If we're fortunate enough to have you playing months after launch, you still find lots of compelling stuff to do. That will manifest itself in a myriad of ways, from straight up content to cool activities we've yet to show off.

We think we did a decent job supporting Halo, post launch, but we were only ever able to cater to the competitive set. That left a lot of players out in the cold. That made a lot of the team grumpy. We wanted to do better. So, Destiny is philosophically built support every type of player, and all modes with ongoing activities and events. We look at it quite a bit like television programming, as opposed to a singular film, as we had in the past. We think it's gonna be pretty great, but we wanted to test out a bunch of our new stuff with Beta, to make sure we could flip knobs and levers live, reacting and responding with lots (and, ho boy, did we see LOTS) of players online and playing.

Beta was water wings. Level 8 is nothing. You barely scratched the surface, and it seems like some folks had fun with what was there.